Both the American League and National League Managers of the Year were announced on Wednesday. Mike Scioscia claimed the title in the AL, and Tony LaRussa earned the honor in the NL.

The awards are voted on prior to the playoffs, so Scioscia received no additional credit for leading the World Champions. Anaheim finished the season with a 99-63 record for a .611 winning percentage, which ranked third in the league. Scioscia didn't have a lot of injury problems with which to contend, but he generally made good decisions throughout the year, using his bench and bullpen well. He moved Scott Schoeneweis to the pen when it was clear Schoeneweis was a detriment to the club as a starter and the team had better candidates for the rotation. Scioscia also held the bullpen together during the couple times closer Troy Percival was unavailable due to injury.

Although he wasn't our choice for AL Manager of the Year, we understand the vote and respect the decision. Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire headed our list of AL managers, followed by Oakland's Art Howe and then Scioscia. Yankee Joe Torre trailed behind the lead three.

Attempting to objectively evaluate a manager is somewhat more difficult than assessing the contribution of a player for a number of reasons, but mostly because you don't want to arbitrarily punish managers for the quality of talent under their guidance. When assembling a preliminary ranking of managers before taking into account the less tangible aspects of the job, we look at Pythagorean Standings and a manager's winning percentage/win-loss record in one-run games.

Oakland (.696), Minnesota (.644), and Anaheim (.585) finished with best records among AL teams in one-run games. The only other AL team over .500 in one-run games was Toronto at 23-21.

Rob Neyer helpfully provides updated Pythagorean Standings and an explanation of the formula at the bottom of his ESPN page. In short, an actual record above the Pythagorean indicates a team finished with a better record than we'd expect in consideration of the number of runs scored and allowed by each team. We can attribute any variance from this expected record to a number of factors, including luck, weather, officiating, and management. Also, managers, by virtue of controlling the daily minutiae of lineups and substitutions, exercise the most control over close games, which is reflected in a team's record in one-run games.

Minnesota led the AL at 7 games over with Oakland close behind at 6 over. We don't like looking solely at the differences in the Pythagorean standings and actual standings, because the formula obviously only looks at a couple of factors. As such, the Angels, who we feel were well managed, still came in 4 games under their Pythagorean. However that fact and their third place ranking in the other list led to our conclusion that Scioscia was only the third best manager in the American League. Howe and Gardenhire were in a dead heat, but we really disliked the way Howe constructed his lineup for the first half of the season. Meanwhile Gardenhire deserved some additional credit for handling the young players and accomplishing so much in his rookie season, successfully continuing Tom Kelly's work. Consequently, we would have awarded the AL Manager of the Year to Gardenhire.

The Cardinals finished the season with a 97-65 record for a .599 winning percentage, which also came in third in the league. St. Louis (.537) ranked sixth in winning percentage in one-run games behind LA (.688), Atlanta (.622), Montreal (.577), San Francisco (.560), and Florida (.545). The Cardinals' actual record matched their Pythagorean record, while Florida (+5), Cincinnati (+4), Colorado (+4), Pittsburgh (+2), San Diego (+2), Arizona (+1), and Philadelphia (+1) all bettered their Pythagorean records. Nonetheless, we completely agree with the choice of LaRussa as NL Manager of the Year.

As discussed above, we use those tools to form a preliminary ranking. We were quite unhappy with several decisions by Bobby Cox and Jim Tracy, particularly with regards to their lineups. Additionally, LaRussa as a manager kept his team together though the odds were stacked against them. The loss of a Hall of Fame broadcaster intimate with the team like Jack Buck would have been hard, but followed almost immediately by the death of Darryl Kile, the combination of events understandably shook the franchise. Many teams would have collapsed at that point even if they were otherwise running fine. St. Louis suffered from debilitating injury problems and still managed to stay in the race all season. If LaRussa, as the manager, had wilted under the pressure, the rest of the club likely would have followed suit. The 2002 Cardinals weren't a great team, but they are certainly respectable.

To finish out our ranking, although both the Dodgers and Braves came in 3 over their Pythagorean and LA had the better record in one-run games, we gave the edge to Bobby Cox, primarily because of his part in assembling and managing the Atlanta bullpen.

Overall, the NL would appear to have many more competent managers than the AL or at least more managers better at handling close games. In addition to the clubs listed above, Florida, Arizona, New York, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh all finished with records better than .500 in one-run games. Jeff Torborg performed surprisingly well using these evaluating tools, but his pitcher handling excludes him from any discussion of competent managers.

Since we've now looked at the best managers in baseball under these criteria, I'd like to take a moment to look at the bottom of the list. In the American League, Boston finished eight games below their Pythagorean, while Grady Little managed them to a 13-23(.361) record in one-run games. Those numbers are clearly disgraceful and indicate the Red Sox should have easily made the playoffs over the Yankees. In the NL, the combination of Don Baylor and Bruce Kimm in Chicago was by far the worst in the league. The Cubs were also eight games under their Pythagorean record while finishing with an 18-36(.333) record in one-run games. Under competent management, they should have been in the playoff hunt. Chicago is attempting to correct the problem, but the Red Sox appear destined for another handicapped season with Little at the reigns.